Traveling alone sucks! It’s boring, expensive, and unsafe! At GAFFL, our mission is to help our users find a travel buddy no matter where they are traveling. In the last few years, we have worked with users from more than 150 countries. From our understanding, these are the five things you should consider before looking for a travel buddy online.

1. Who are you looking for?

The ‘Who’ is the most important aspect when it comes to finding the right person to travel together. You need to find the type of person you will be comfortable with while traveling together. For multi-day road trips or adventure travel, you might be sharing cars and lodging as well. Are you looking for someone who is like-minded who has a lot of similarities with you? Or, are you looking for someone who is very different than who you are? These should be the first questions you ask yourself.

2. Why?

Then comes the ‘Why’. Are you looking for a travel buddy to splits costs, to have a shared experience, or to make new friends while traveling? You may want to have a shared experience but you do not really care about the budget. You want to stay in 4-star hotels, but if your travel buddy is only traveling with you to lower costs, they may not want to spend too much money on hotels. There will be a conflict. So, after getting connected to someone, while you are in the planning phase, talk freely about the ‘Why’.

Picture by Mitch, GAFFL users doing a road trip in Iceland

3. Trip Flexibility

Some travelers are super flexible. But, some are not. They may have to catch a flight or have a list of places they want to be at on particular dates, etc. If you are a flexible traveler, you should also look for someone who is just as flexible as you are.

4. Paying costs Upfront?

While planning a trip, before you actually meet up with your travel buddy, you may book hotels or rent cars together. If you had paid for all the expenses upfront, what will you do if your travel buddy for some reason never shows up? To protect users from this ‘no-show’ event, GAFFL recently built ‘Splits’.  Before paying all the costs, you can create a Split Request for your travel buddy. Once your travel buddy pays you, the system holds the money until the trip starts. This way you and your travel buddy both are protected economically.

5. Meeting a Real Person

Fake profiles are something we cannot ignore anymore. It’s really important to do your own research. See if your travel buddy has a genuine profile pic, social account verification, and also ID verification if you are concerned. If they have not completed those steps, you should ask them to do so. You should always meet up with your travel buddy in a public location. If you feel unsafe, you can easily say ‘thank you’ and leave. As a solo traveler, trust your gut feelings.

If you want to get started with your travel buddy search, you can browse through the trips and local listings below.